Retro Red Text in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will be creating a 3D styled ‘Retro Red Text’ graphic. This tutorial is aimed at beginners, this tutorial uses basic Photoshop features such as distort, duplicating layers, photoshop effects and blending options.

Step 1 Create a new canvas (File -> New), I have set mine to 615×500 to give me a little space, but in reality we will need less than half of this.

Step 2 Select the Text Tool and key in any text, we have used ‘RetroRedText’ for demonstration purposes. Select the font Trebuchet MS if it available in your list of fonts.

Step 3 Right click your text layer and ‘Convert to Shape’.

Step 4 Go to (Edit -> Transform Path -> Distort) distort.

Step 5 Drag the points as shown below.

Step 6 Right click the layer and select ‘Blending Options’. Select stroke and set the outside colour to black (#000000). Select colour overlay and set the colour to grey (#999999).

Step 7 Right click the layer and duplicate it. Move the new layer with your arrow keys up 2 and left 2. Repeat this process another three times.

Step 8 Your canvas should now look like the text below.

Step 9 Merge all you layers excluding the background.

Step 10 Visit (Image -> Adjustments -> Exposure) and move the Exposure slider to the far right and the Gamma slider to the far left.

Step 11 Now visit (Image -> Adjustments -> Replace Color) and click the first colour block and make this black (#000000). Then select the bottom colour block and make this red (#FF0000).

Step 12 Visit the Channel Mixer by going to (Image -> Adjustments -> Channel Mixer) and set the Red channel to 200%.